Home, Sweet Home

First week back has been filled with the whole spectrum of emotions. It is a bizarre feeling to be torn between two places incredibly close to my heart. In Jax I have my family, my friends, and my RCC Church family; in Costa I have what has come to be my family, new friends, and the Celebración Church family. One of the hardest things about being back is realizing that while I have changed dramatically in the five months I have been away and I feel completely different, I don’t stand out. Nothing in my outward appearance separates me from the thousands of other light skinned, light haired, and light eyed Americans around me. I am so accustomed to being externally different from everyone else that it is strange for me to walk into the grocery store and blend in with everyone else. Even though I feel different, and act a little strange because I marvel at how small the coins here are, no one is going to assume that I am any different just by looking at me. Yet, even though I look the same as everyone else here I feel so different. I wish that I had more descriptive words to explain this weird state of “not belonging.”

I have also really been struggling with the drastic change in my day to day life. The average day in Costa, not that there is ever really an ‘average’ day there, is an adventure filled with tangible GOD moments. Unfortunately what I have been doing is expecting (a dangerous word, I know) for GOD to show up in the day to day in the same kinds of ways that he does in Alajuelita. I have been walking a lot since I have gotten home through neighborhoods trying to find people to start conversations like we would do in the barrios in Costa Rica and no one is outside. I can walk the mile to my school and back and pass one headphoned runner and a biker, maybe. I have just been aching to feel used by GOD here. Through a long conversation I had with my Dad GOD really revealed to me the self centered aspects of my frustration. First of all, who am I to say that GOD isn’t using me within my own family and friends? Just because it doesn’t feel like Costa Rica does not mean that GOD is not moving in my own life here in Jacksonville. It became blatantly obvious that what seemed like my righteous frustration with GOD’s absence was really my inability to get past my rigid expectations of what I wanted to see GOD do through me while I am here.

However, GOD is so good. Right after coming to terms with all of this my Dad and I went to lunch where we learned that a friend of ours was in the hospital with a bone infection. Ultimately we were able to visit with him in the hospital and pray with him at the end. I cannot explain what an incredible experience it was for me in so many ways. First of all I think it may have been the first experience like that in the States where I have spontaneously arrived unannounced to a place with the intention of getting past the awkwardness and asking to pray with someone. Secondly, it was so incredible because I got to see my Dad do just that; and we got to do it together. Way cooler than I could have ever imagined it in my mind.

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4): a widely used and even more widely abused verse. However, I truly think it applies so perfectly to this situation. My desire was for GOD to use me; I wanted nothing more than to do crazy, radical things for GOD and was impatient to do just that. But I was also putting GOD in a box by telling Him just what I wanted those crazy, radical things to look like and when I wanted to see them. When I finally began to surrender my own preconceptions and just take delight in the fact that He is using me in ways that I cannot even see (which is really so cool to think about), His desires lined up with mine and an incredible opportunity presented itself. I encourage anyone who is praying for opportunities and situations to be Christ to continue to do just that with an attitude of surrender. We cannot begin to fathom the situations that GOD has planned to put in our paths and attempting to dream them up in our own minds just creates a mess. That doesn’t mean we should be inactive and just wait for something to happen. Opportunities present themselves all of the time and we just dismiss them; action is required as well.

Thank you all for your continued support while I am serving GOD State-side in Jacksonville, FL. I will be back in Costa two days after Christmas with my sister who will spend a week there. I am so excited about everything that is still going on with 6:8 and cannot wait to be back. Check out the blogs of anyone on staff by clicking on this link http://gammagefamily.blogspot.com under “People we love” to find out more about the amazing things GOD is doing in Alajuelita. GOD BLESS

Becca